The cinematic teaser trailer for Star Wars Eclipse impressed us with its visuals and sound. But what do we know about the game behind it?
On December 9th 2021 Quantic Dream and Lucasfilm Games released a brand new cinematic teaser trailer to an upcoming video game entitled “Star Wars Eclipse”.
To be honest, this one came as a total surprise to me. I had to do some extra research to get myself familiar with the studio that is developing it, the rumors about the game before its official release and Star Wars Eclipse itself.
If you are not familiar with this developer and their past, if you have not heard of Star Wars Eclipse yet, buckle up, you are in for a surprise or two.
So, let’s get started!
“From award-winning independent studio Quantic Dream and Lucasfilm Games comes Star Wars Eclipse, a new action-adventure, multiple character branching narrative game set in the High Republic era of the iconic Star Wars galaxy, now early in development.” – the official game website reveals.
The trailer is purely cinematic and shows absolutely no gameplay whatsoever. It is incredibly beautiful, though. Stunning. When we see visuals like that I often regret that we tend to over-use words like “incredible” and “amazing” in our everyday lives. They should really be kept for moments like this one.
The trailer also features great sound and one that is not exactly typical for Star Wars. While watching it I got Star Wars Legends vibes mixed with strong (and very positive) memories of the opening song of Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order by the Mongolian throat-singing band The HU.
But what is the trailer about?
Not anything in particular, really. We see all kinds of scenes – from dramatic moments, to lightsaber fight sequences, all mixed with epic-looking drummers, who create this very strange and pleasing feeling of something epic coming our way.
The game is set in the High Republic era. This means that the events in it will be happening around two hundred years before the Star Wars Movies.
If you have not yet gotten yourself familiar with what The High Republic is, I strongly recommend you to read the novels that have been released so far. The comic books are also a great source of new canon stories.
I haven’t yet read the books dedicated to younger audiences, so I can’t comment on those. I do feel like I am missing some links, though.
The High Republic is Disney’s first jump into the unknown. They are allowing various artists and authors to expand the new Disney Star Wars canon with more stories of the times when the Jedi were at their best and the dangers they faced were not all related to the Sith.
There’s very little we know so far about Star Wars Eclipse. The official announcement and game site don’t mention a release date yet. Not even a platform or platforms for which the game is being developed. This likely means that it will not be a console-exclusive.
Star Wars Eclipse is a story-heavy adventure. It is advertised as an action-adventure game with multiple-character branching narrative.
Since I’ve never played any of the previous five games from Quantic Dream, I don’t know their style from personal experience. My research tells me that their games are heavy on story and drama. They seem to be in many ways similar to the games from a studio I am more familiar with – Telltale Games.
Thanks to more hints from the official Star Wars Eclipse site, we get a better understanding of the phrase “multiple-character narrative”. You will play the game from the perspective of several main characters, “each with their own morality, personality, motivations, and impact upon each other and the story“.
Playing a game from the perspective of multiple characters is something that Quantic Dream are known for with their previous titles.
From what I have learned about Quantic Dream and their previous games, they like to create branching storylines with multiple paths for you to play through. This also means different endings.
But this rises the question of how this game can be a Star Wars canon if it offers multiple different endings to its narrative? In fact it is not mentioned anywhere if the game is part of the canon (yet). It may very well not be.
Starwars.com almost confirms that the game will not offer canon storyline with the following quote: “Through these decisions, players will forge their own legend in the golden age of the Jedi.“.
I know that I am playing with words here, but I can’t find an explanation of how a multimedia project such as the High Republic era can offer branching and fate-determining choices of characters if they are canonized. The only possible way is if these characters are never used again in future projects, which directly opposes the idea of the High Republic era’s idea as a whole.
Quantic Dream is an independent studio, founded in 1997, and has released the following titles so far:
- The Nomad Soul (1999)
- Farenheit (2005)
- Heavy Rain (2010)
- Beyond: Two Souls (2013)
- Detroit: Become Human (2018)
The French studio Quantic Dream has some strong controversies in its portfolio. Both coming from game titles they have released previously and from accusations that they enforce crunch work overtime sessions upon their employees.
“In January 2018, three French news outlets Le Monde, Mediapart, and Canard PC published the results of a joint investigation into the company’s business practices. Le Monde called Quantic Dream “a toxic corporate culture, management with inappropriate words and attitudes, under-considered employees, overwhelming workloads and questionable contractual practices”. First among the allegations raised by the newspapers, Cage and de Fondaumière were said to have participated in or encouraged a sexist and racist culture, with controversial images exchanged by email and posted around the office including photos of studio collaborators and employees digitally edited to appear as Nazis or porn stars.” – quote from Quantic Dream’s page on Wikipedia.
The studio’s lead is David Cage, who writes and directs their video games. According to him the studio’s mission is to “evoke emotion through interactive storytelling, highlighting empathy, sadness, and guilt in opposition to frustration, competition, and anger”.
Star Wars Eclipse is currently “in early development”. This would most likely mean that we should not expect it to be ready in 2022 or at least not until the next Holiday season.
When I saw the title of the game (before I watched the trailer), I thought this would be a game that reveals to us how the High Republic era ends – its eclipse.
The trailer, however, features a real eclipse event, which may or may not be actually as important as you think. I don’t want to go into speculation, but I have a feeling that the word “eclipse” here is not simply describing a normal sun eclipse moment, but rather something related to the era’s ending.
The High Republic content started in early 2021 and by the time this game releases, it would have been at least two years (maybe even more). It’s not that Disney and the authors they hire cannot continue to develop stories from that period forever, but two years seems enough for them to wrap up the era “bright era of the Jedi” as I personally like to label it. Especially with the pace they are releasing the waves of new books and comic books now.
All images and their descriptions used in this article are from the cinematic teaser trailer and the game’s website.
